Zapping through the radio stations as I was driving home last Sunday morning, I came across a budding young politician being interviewed on a local station resorting to expletives and harsh diction which I deemed totally out of sync with the reality of today’s political world. This led me to this week’s observations.

We preach social cohesion, we preach solidarity, we preach reconciliation and yet many of our politicians – our meant-to-be role models in society – foul-mouth people and pass judgements on everyone and everything that is not in line with their ideas or thinking.

Tolerance and differences of opinion play second fiddle when it comes to their opinions. It is no surprise that this country of just over 400,000 citizens, with one Law Court, has hundreds of libel suits pending and, needless to say, the vast majority are filed against local politicians. This number will increase substantially over the next few months.

Why so many libel suits? Are politicians, political parties and local media taking calculated risks, in the knowledge that the damages with which they may be faced, if declared responsible for some defamatory statement, stands capped at a paltry eleven thousand four hundred euros. This begs the question whether we would have the same number of libel cases if we had the British compensation structures in place? Would our politicians embark on character assassinations of anybody they deem to be in their line of fire? Would denigration be the order of the day during and close to electoral campaigns?

We are in election mode – or at least so the country has deemed. We are seeing political billboards on every corner, we are on the receiving end of a larger than usual dose of politics, which in itself is not bad once every few years but do our politicians realise that they will reap what they sow? Do they realise that the way they bring forward their campaigns, the way they discuss issues, they way they address their supporters and their opponents will influence their younger generations. It seems not from what we are witnessing.

This begs the question as to whether those who are passive about politics are influenced by these attitudes or whether they are simply being even further alienated. Do insults and demeaning phrases translate into votes? Clearly not, in my humble opinion, so if the writing is on the wall why do many of our politicians indulge in such baseless attitudes and diatribes? Does nobody rope them in any more?

On a more worrying note are certain self-proclaimed political opinionists and commentators. One in particular comes to mind who is stooping so low this year that it cannot pass unnoticed by the most unintelligible of politicians that we may have, and yet he retains his time on the airwaves.

The politically oriented television stations and radios will surely increase their political content and dosage over the next few months, as will the political articles. Does anybody control their politicians, their employees and the people they permit on air to ensure that standards in communications are kept, to ensure a level of respect for divergent views that may, and should, be criticised if one disagrees with them. In this day and age, should we be permitting anyone to be harassed or, even worse, insulted and defamed, not for the opinion expressed but to undermine one’s adversary?

Is it not time to put an end to all this? Is it not time to have a political standards ethics board to regulate all this? We clearly need to give the Broadcasting Authority the responsibility – and the tools – to act as an efficient and strong monitor in this field to rap, censor, discipline and fine abuse in broadcasting mediums that overstep the marks. Evidently political stations have relegated discipline to the second division and in times like those ahead they will be relegated even further and replaced by political adulation, political mileage and political criticism of issues, personalities and events.

The situation will clearly sink even further, as it has generally done in the past, to a mudslinging free-for-all in both the broadcast and printed media. Is this what Joe Public wants or, even more, needs? How are we going to put an end to all this, how is our voice going to be heard? Should not the laws be changed to render these political stations as responsible as all other stations and printed matter?

And what about web sites? Why are these still unregulated? With so much social media available, when will the authorities wake up to this reality and regulate this media?

How can we expect to rear disciplined politicians, to expect politics to attract high-flying young people to enter the political arena in such circumstances? I would hasten to add that society is calling for more maturity, for fewer policies based on the maxim that the end justifies the means.

Will this call, like others in the past, go unnoticed?